When we think about citizen journalism, we usually think of blogging. Yesterday, I had a chance to talk to Andrés Duque (a/k/a Blabbeando) about his work translating both video and the 14-hour debate in the Argentina Senate leading up to the approval of same-sex marriage in Argentina.
Andrés Duque–known to his Twitter and blog followers as Blabbeando–knew he was probably tweeting too much about the gay marriage vote in Argentina when Twitter cut him after only about three hours of translating the debate in the Argentina Senate.
But his twitter feeds, in Spanish and English, became the go-to sources for people in both the United States and Latin America following the historic 14-hour debate and early morning vote in Buenos Aires with the Los Angeles Times and powerhouse gay blogs JoeMyGod and Towleroad taking notice.
Duque–who tweets at @Blabbeando for his English-language followers and @NoticiasLGBT in Spanish–began tweeting translations of the debate after Joe Jervis at JoeMyGod posted a link to the live debate.
“I was sitting and watching and figured, why not?” Duque told Mediaite. “I’d been writing and thinking a lot about gay marriage in Argentina and I saw that a lot of people were having trouble following the debate, so I decided to jump in.”
There were a couple of things that really struck me after talking to Duque as it relates to LGBT journalism:
– He mentioned the influence of Keith Boykin and other African American gay writers and said there just weren’t–and aren’t–enough Latino LGBT writers.
– The importance of mentors. He specifically talked about the role Rex Wockner has played in his work.
– That journalism isn’t just about writing in long-form or even blogging. Journalists have an impact when they tweet the news–as Duque has done–but also when they do things like translating videos for English-speaking audiences.